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Top 7 Ways to Finish Your Book!

Streamline Your Publishing Process: Some authors feel they don’t have enough material for a complete book. Here are seven easy ways to add material and pages to your published projects.

Conduct a survey or poll on your topic and publish the results.

This can be extremely useful in a number of ways. First you can list it on your website and have people that visit fill it out, and list the results the following month (people love seeing the results), or you can use it for audiences at your speaking engagements. And, I’m assuming if you’re writing a book, you would be speaking to every group possible in order to promote your book. Just use your survey at the end of your speech and have the audience fill them out to draw for a door prize. That way you get the results to your poll (which you let them know will be published in your book), their contact information, and be the hero by offering a door prize. Now isn’t that a great way to be remembered?

Add in some helpful top 10 lists.

People love “top 10 lists” or the “10 key ways to do……”, and they’re easy to write. To do this, just think for a moment of all the steps it takes to do whatever you’re writing about. Then list each step with a little paragraph giving suggestions as to how to use each step effectively. Exactly like this article, except I’ve only listed seven.

Add a resource section.

If you’re like most writers, you probably do a lot of research on your subject. And because of that, you should have a lot of inside secrets and useable information that would be valuable to your reader. List each resource along with the contact information or do a comparison between various resources and write a report on your findings.

Include worksheets at the end of each chapter.

This is truly one of the best ways to reinforce the reader’s learning curve. It’s like a refresher course as they read through your book. And, another benefit is that as they finish each worksheet, they’ll have more ownership of your book and you’ll have more testimonials coming your way.

Provide a question and answer series at the end of your book or each chapter.

Think of this as the perfect set up. Just imagine having just the right questions asked and then listing your answers. This is an area that you can really stress your expertise and bring out examples that the reader had not even thought about. This one item will also have your readers considering you the real expert in your field.

Interview other experts on your topic.

Now I know we were just talking about “you” being the true expert in your field, but I hate to break it to you, we all have competition. And you can either try to ignore them and hope they’ll go away, but they’ll probably keep on going like the Energizer Bunny. So, what should you do? Well the smart writer goes to the highest level possible (and the one with the most clout!), to see if they can get an interview. Now I know this sounds really hard, but if you let them know their interview is going to be in a book (and a published one at that), they will see it as publicity. Believe me, the more famous they are, the more they love publicity. If you make them a deal they can’t refuse, they’ll be happy to accommodate. Just make sure you allow enough time to contact them, and make it apparent that you are on the up and up. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a professionally designed website. I know our website has helped us in attracting joint ventures with some very famous industry leaders.

And, last but not least, co-author your book.

Now this one can be tricky. If you don’t find a writer that has the same common goal and one that compliments your style without competing, you won’t have a book you’ll be proud of or that you’ll be able to sell. But, how do you find this type of writer? Well, one way is to join some of the writer’s organizations like the Author’s Guild. Another way is to attend some of the conferences and writing workshops specifically targeted to writers and authors. Once you find the perfect writing partner, the next step is to take care of the legalities and all the money stuff – in other words, GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING! We can’t stress that enough. We’ve seen many a writer wind up with no book and a lot of time and money wasted. So, if you follow all these rules and still come up empty handed, the best choice would be to have a book producer find the perfect co-author for you. This is a service they offer by finding the perfect writing team, handling all the paperwork, and taking care of all the publishing hassles. Now doesn’t that sound much better? By handling all the behind the scenes tasks, you get to focus on what you do best, writing the world’s next best seller!

Copyright 2007, Casey Lee

Casey Lee, The Publicity Diva, is a delightful and entertaining speaker, accomplished author, and a seasoned publicist with Penworth Publishing and Publicity (http://www.penworth.com). She is the author of "52 Ways to Become Famous" and "How to Get Booked on Reality TV."

Casey works with renowned experts and celebrities positioning and promoting them to the media and the world. She truly believes that no matter what business or profession a person is in, without publicity and promotional efforts, they will never truly know the success theyre meant to enjoy.

Casey has more than 28 years of experience in the publishing and publicity fields. Her clients include Fortune 500 corporations, distinguished experts, best-selling authors, and legendary celebrities.